It seems like Japan is in the news, more often than not, for bizarre activities. The latest that’s making waves on the internet is a Tumblr blog with pictures of girls licking doorknobs.

The work belongs to illustrator Ryuko Azuma, who says the idea started as many good ones do – with a drunken tweet. Famous for his sexy, edgy drawings, one night he tweeted that a collection of photos of a girl licking a doorknob would be a big hit. Azuma says he wouldn’t have done anything about it if the tweet had gone unnoticed. But as luck would have it, it didn’t. A 21-year-old photographer, Ai Ehara, replied to the tweet and that was how the ‘Doorknob Girl’ was launched. Ehara herself posed as the first Doorknob Girl, but when the site went viral, they began to hire several other models for the job. According to Ehara the idea was ‘extraordinarily unusual’.

While doorknobs are not generally considered as sexual objects, the images of a woman licking one seem to have caught the nation’s fancy. So much, that they were even featured on national TV. Some say that a doorknob represents the perfect phallic symbol, especially because it comes in all shapes and sizes. The pictures themselves are generally not very blatantly sexual. The women are fully clothed, with a variety of objects cluttered around them. They are sometimes dressed in a school uniform, and a few wear the attire of an office worker. Building the story behind the picture is completely left to the imagination of the viewer.

In a country where censorship laws are pretty strict, artists, especially manga and game designers, have been forced to become very creative in their depiction of sexuality. Wondering about all those germs on doorknobs? Well, Azuma and Ehara always make sure they disinfect the knobs before a model starts licking it.